Honeycomb Query Design

Design effective Honeycomb queries for dashboards, investigations, and saved queries. Covers query specification, visualization selection, SLI-oriented patterns, and common anti-patterns.

Query Specification

Structure

{
  "calculations": [{"op": "COUNT"}, {"op": "P99", "column": "duration_ms"}],
  "filters": [{"column": "service.name", "op": "=", "value": "api-gateway"}],
  "filter_combination": "AND",
  "breakdowns": ["http.route"],
  "orders": [{"column": "http.route", "order": "ascending"}],
  "limit": 20,
  "time_range": 7200,
  "granularity": 60
}

Calculation operators

COUNT, SUM, AVG, MAX, MIN, COUNT_DISTINCT, HEATMAP, CONCURRENCY, P001, P01, P05, P10, P20, P25, P50, P75, P80, P90, P95, P99, P999, RATE_AVG, RATE_SUM, RATE_MAX

Filter operators

=, !=, >, >=, <, <=, starts-with, does-not-start-with, ends-with, does-not-end-with, exists, does-not-exist, contains, does-not-contain, in, not-in

Time range

• time_range: Relative window in seconds (default: 7200 = 2 hours)
• start_time / end_time: Absolute UNIX timestamps
• Combine one timestamp with time_range, but not all three

Granularity

Seconds per time bucket. Valid range: time_range / 1000 to time_range.

Time range	Recommended granularity	Buckets
10 minutes (600)	10-30s	20-60
2 hours (7200)	60s	120
24 hours (86400)	300-600s	144-288
7 days (604800)	1800-3600s	168-336
28 days (2419200)	3600-14400s	168-672

Visualization Selection

Choose chart types based on the data pattern, not the Honeycomb default (line graph).

Chart types

Value	Name	Best for
line	Line graph	Continuous metrics with high cardinality over time (CPU, memory)
tsbar	Time series bar	Time-bucketed counts and sparse data (errors, deploys, events)
stacked	Stacked area	Showing composition/proportion over time (errors by type, traffic by service)
stat	Stat card	Single headline number with sparkline (current p99, error rate)
cbar	Categorical bar	Comparing values across groups, non-time-series (latency by endpoint)
cpie	Categorical pie	Proportional breakdown of a total (traffic share by region)

chart_index

When a query has multiple calculations, chart_index maps to the 0-based index in the calculations array. Set chart type per calculation:

{
  "charts": [
    {"chart_index": 0, "chart_type": "tsbar"},
    {"chart_index": 1, "chart_type": "line"}
  ]
}

Visualization Recommendations

Latency

• Calculations: Use percentiles, never AVG. AVG is skewed by outliers and doesn't represent typical user experience. Use P50 as the baseline (median) and P99 for worst-case.
• Chart type: line with overlaid_charts: true for P50/P99 overlay. The gap between P50 and P99 is the signal -- a widening gap indicates tail latency problems.
• Units: Always milliseconds. Note conversion in the panel title if the column uses other units.
• Title pattern: "Latency: P50 and P99 (ms)"
• Granularity: Match to request volume. Low-traffic services need larger buckets (300s+) to avoid noisy graphs.
• Heatmap complement: Add a full-width HEATMAP panel below the percentile chart for distribution visibility. Heatmaps reveal bimodal distributions and outlier clusters that percentile lines hide.

Error rate

• Calculation: AVG on a boolean error column. In Honeycomb, AVG(bool) computes the proportion of true values -- this IS the error rate (0.0-1.0).
• Chart type: line -- shows trend clearly without visual clutter
• Breakdowns: Break down by service.name or http.route to answer "where are errors coming from?" Do NOT break down by http.status_code -- individual status codes are too granular and produce noisy, unactionable charts.
• Granularity: Use 300s (5min) for per-service breakdowns to smooth out noise from sparse buckets. At 2-min granularity, a single error in a low-volume bucket reads as 100% error rate.
• Title pattern: "Error Rate" (aggregate) or "Error Rate by Service"

Throughput / request volume

• Calculations: COUNT
• Chart type: stacked bar when broken down by service or route -- clearly shows both total volume and composition. Use tsbar only for total count without breakdown.
• Breakdowns: service.name, http.route, rpc.method
• Granularity: Produce meaningful bars. For a 2-hour window, 60-120s. For 24 hours, 300-600s.
• Title pattern: "Request Volume by Service"

Cardinality / unique values

• Calculations: COUNT_DISTINCT on the column of interest
• Chart type: cbar for comparing across groups, stat for a single headline number
• Use case: Unique users, distinct trace IDs, unique error messages

Distribution / heatmap

• Calculations: HEATMAP on a numeric column
• Chart type: Leave as default (heatmap renders natively)
• Use case: Latency distribution, request size distribution. Especially valuable for spotting bimodal patterns (e.g., cache hit vs miss) that aggregates hide.

Rate of change

• Calculations: RATE_SUM, RATE_AVG, or RATE_MAX
• Chart type: line (shows trend direction clearly)
• Use case: Detecting acceleration/deceleration in metrics

Sparse data

When data arrives infrequently (webhooks, batch jobs, rare errors):

• Always use tsbar instead of line charts. Line graphs interpolate between points, creating misleading visual continuity.
• Set omit_missing_values: true to avoid flat zero lines between events.
• Use wider granularity to aggregate sparse events into visible bars.

Anti-Patterns

• AVG for latency: Hides outliers. Always use percentiles (P50/P99).
• Stacked bar for latency: Stacking percentiles is meaningless -- percentiles are not additive.
• Status code breakdowns: Too many series, not actionable. Break down by service or route instead.
• Line charts on sparse data: Interpolation creates false continuity. Use tsbar.
• Too many breakdowns: More than 5-7 series on one chart becomes unreadable. Use limit in the query or aggregate differently.

SLI-Oriented Query Design

Structure queries around Service Level Indicators. An SLI is a ratio: good events / total events. Keep to five or fewer per service.

SLI	Honeycomb calculation	Visualization
Availability	AVG(error) inverted (1 - error rate)	line
Latency	P50/P99 on duration_ms	line overlaid
Error rate	AVG(error) on boolean column	line
Throughput	COUNT	stacked by service
Freshness	MAX(age_seconds) or custom	line

For SLO-aware dashboards, use compare_time_offset_seconds (e.g., 86400) to overlay current error rate against the previous day. This shows burn trajectory without requiring SLO-specific API access.

Running Queries

Via MCP server (all plans)

Use the Honeycomb MCP server to create and test queries. This works on all plans and doesn't require Enterprise API permissions.

honeycomb mcp call run_query -f dataset=<dataset> -f query_json='<json>'

Via API (requires key permissions)

honeycomb api -X POST /1/queries/<dataset> --input <query-file>.json

Note: piping JSON via stdin can fail if string values contain special characters (e.g., != in filter operators). Use --input with a file instead.

Saved Queries (Query Annotations)

A "saved query" in the Honeycomb UI is a query annotation that references a query ID.

jq -n '{name: "Panel Title", query_id: "<query-id>"}' | honeycomb query annotation create --dataset <dataset> --file -

Reference

• Query examples
• API types